2016 Christmas gift book guide

Another year, another Christmas gift book guide. I’m not going to call out the books germane to the 2017 Gospel Doctrine curriculum; however you can see those recommendations here.Hoiland, One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly: The Art of Seeking God (MI) $12.95Mason, Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt (MI) $15.99Huntsman, Worship: Experiencing and Being Transformed by God (Deseret) $19.99Miller, Future Mormon (Kofford), $17.42
It was a great year for devotional literature. We had both Hoiland (AKA ashmae of BCC fame) and Mason come to Seattle to talk about their volumes, and both experiences were moving to me. Their respective titles are useful for discerning what the books are about. You can read about Hoiland’s here and here. Steve did a Q&A with Mason about his. Thanks to the Maxwell Institute for publishing these fine volumes. Huntsman is a legitimate NT scholar at BYU and does some strong work in his volume. Jason K. reviewed it here. Miller is a regular contributor at BCC as well, and is known for highly philosophical work (frequently of the continental sort). Angela C gave his a nice review.

Holbrook and Bowman, Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (UUP) $25.37Turner, The Mormon Jesus: A Biography (Harvard) $21.93MacKay and Frederick, Joseph Smith’s Seer Stones (Deseret and RSC) $24.99
I’m certainly partial to Women and Mormonism. I have a chapter in it on women and authority. But I would be a booster if mine weren’t included; it is really great. It has chapters from many different scholars of Mormonism on many topics related to the title and often associate with “agency.” I think it is a must-read. Here is a review. Turner is the author of the BY bio from a couple of years ago. I guess this is where you go from there. He has also pulled in some great reviews (see here and here). And remember when seer stones were all sorts of controversial? Now Deseret book offers the book like candy. JKC reviewedJoseph Smith’s Seer Stones and found it a bit idiosynchratic but worth checking out.

Johnson and Reeder’s The Witness of Women and Ulrich’s A House Full of Females don’t look like they will arrive before Christmas, but both will be excellent. So if you have some leeway there, they are great choices. Keep an eye out for them.